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Halton Hills speedster will drive in the NASCAR Camping World Series truck race as well as the Pinty’s Series for late-model stock cars on the Sunday of Labour Day weekend. Plus more.

Gary Klutt of Halton Hills will do double duty Labour Day weekend at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park. As well as racing in the NASCAR Pinty's Series, he'll drive a truck for Kyle Busch Motorsports in the Camping World Series truck race. (Courtesy, NASCAR Home Tracks)

Gary Klutt, a NASCAR Pinty’s Series stock car racer from Halton Hills, has landed a plum ride for the NASCAR Camping World Series truck race scheduled for Canadian Tire Motorsport Park on the Sunday of the Labour Day long weekend.

It was announced Thursday that Klutt has been selected to drive the No. 51 Toyota Tundra entered in the race by Kyle Busch Motorsports, one of the series’ premier teams.

Busch, a leading driver in the Sprint Cup Series — he’s the defending champion — files entries in the truck series for William Byron and Christopher Bell, who will partner Klutt at CTMP in the Sept. 4 race.

Byron is currently leading the truck standings and recently signed a multi-year contract to drive in NASCAR for Rick Hendrick, who counts Jimmie Johnson and Dale Earnhardt Jr. among his employees. Bell is an open-wheel racing champion who’s competing in the truck series as a Toyota development driver.

Which means Klutt, 24, is in pretty select company as well as driving for an A-list team.

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“I’m very excited,” he told the Star in an interview. “It’s such as awesome opportunity to do the race but also to be in such good equipment. I have to thank (regular third driver) Cody Coughlin and Jegs (a U.S. auto equipment company that sponsors the No. 51 truck). They had the opportunity to go and compete for a late-model championship and weren’t able to race this race.

“A bunch of drivers put in their resumes but it really made sense — it being a hometown race — for me to do it. It should be a good weekend.”

Klutt, one of 11 drivers named to the NASCAR Next program this season (designed to spotlight the best and brightest rising young stars in North American racing), will join fellow Canadian Cameron Hayley of Calgary in the CTMP event.

While Hayley is in his second full season of racing in the truck series, this will be Klutt’s first start although he is a racing veteran with kart championships under his belt as well as race wins in the Pinty’s Series.

Unlike Hayley, Klutt will be racing twice at Old Mosport, pretty much back-to-back: the Pinty’s Series Can-Am 200 will go to the post on the Sunday morning, to be followed almost immediately by the Chevrolet Silverado 250 truck race. Klutt is confident he can handle both challenges.

“I’m in pretty good shape,” he said. “It’s nice to have raced all summer, so I’m in race shape. I’ll just have to be real cognizant about hydration beforehand and make sure I eat properly. And it’s Mosport; it’s not some little short track that can really beat you up. You get a break up the back straight.”

While the Kyle Busch opportunity was too good to pass up, Klutt was planning to enter the truck race, regardless.

“What we were initially going to do was run our own truck,” he said. “Back in the spring, that was the plan but I was actively looking for a good ride. So things have worked out pretty well.”

Klutt said he’s confident he’ll be competitive, once he gets out on the track. “I just got back from North Carolina where I went with the Kyle Busch team to the Toyota simulator, which was state-of-the-art. I did some laps there. That gave me some of the feel and the nuances of that truck at the track.

“The beautiful part is that I don’t have to learn the track (CTMP) at all. I can drive around it with my eyes closed. I just have to get used to the vehicle.”

In the Pinty’s Series, which is his full-time racing gig, he’s currently running eighth in points and disappointed that he hasn’t done better.

“It’s been a frustrating season, he said. “We’ve had our share of mechanical failures – blowing up our engine at the first race — and then we’ve been run over a couple of times (translation: wrecked) but that’s racing, it goes in cycles. I’m looking forward to turning it around.

“It would be nice to have a good showing at Mosport and at the last couple of ovals before the season ends.”

NEWS ABOUT OTHER RACERS AND RACING

Austin Riley is a 15-year-old from Uxbridge who suffers from autism (a complex neurobiological illness). Like some sufferers, Austin has found a form of refuge in a particular activity and in his case it's been karting. Not content to suffer in silence, Austin and his father Jason, for several years, have built an educational component into their racing schedule. At every track they go to, they visit local schools and make autism awareness presentations. They need your help in preparing for the 2017 Autism Awareness Tour and, to this end, a dinner is planned for Sept. 17 (a Saturday) beginning at 7 p.m. at The Mill Bar & Grill Unionville, 139 Main Street Unionville, Markham. The Rileys want to tell you some of the amazing stories from previous tours as well as to map out what they have planned in future. All proceeds will go toward Racing with Autism. Interested in attending? Click here for details about how to purchase tickets.

The 26th annual Race of Champions, which features drivers from Formula One, NASCAR, IndyCar, sports cars, rallying, etc., going head-to-head in identically prepared cars in a stadium setting, will be held next January in a baseball stadium at Miami, Fla. The competition — F1 driver Sebastien Vettel is the defending champion — will be held Jan. 21-22, a week before the Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona. It's the first time the RoC has been held in North America. Previously, it was held in Paris, London, Beijing and so-on. The world's greatest race drivers will be converging on Miami for that weekend and observers are wondering if some (or a lot) of them will stick around and race in the Rolex 24. We'll have to wait and see on that.

Formula One is back after summer vacation and the Grand Prix of Belgium at Spa-Francorchamps is scheduled for this weekend. TSN will have practice and qualifying Friday (7:45 a.m.) and Saturday (7:55 a.m.) and the race on Sunday at 7:55 a. m. NASCAR has two of its series at Michigan while the third series is at Road America. The Camping World Series truck race from Michigan will be on Fox Sports Racing Saturday at 1 p.m. The Xfinity Series race from Road America will be seen on TSN at 3 Saturday. The Sprint Cup Series race will be on TSN Sunday at 2 p.m. IndyCar is at Texas to resume the race there that had to be stopped because of rain back in June. James Hinchcliffe is leading. Josef Newgarden crashed before the rains came and won't be allowed to take the restart. You can watch the rest of that race on Sportsnet 360 at 9 p.m. Saturday. Oh, and the IMSA WeatherTech sports cars are also racing and that race can be seen Sunday at 1:30 on FSR.

Speaking of IndyCar, they announced their 2017 schedule today and there will be 17 races, beginning March 12 in St. Petersburg, Fla., and concluding Sept. 17 at Sonoma Raceway in California. The Honda Indy Toronto will once again be held in mid-July, with the race scheduled for Sunday, July 16. A return to the oval in St. Louis is new. There will be six ovals, six road courses and five temporary street circuits. One double-header is planned — at Detroit.

Finally, Steve Kinser, the King of the World of Outlaws sprint car series, announced this week that he thinks this will be his last season. It was kind of a retirement announcement, but he did leave the door open. He's smart. Sammy Swindell announced several years ago that he was done, that it was all over, and that lasted about a week. Sammy might not be at every race but he shows up at enough, and wins enough, that he might as well have saved his breath when he said he was finished. This might be the difference, though. When Sammy's out there, you know it. King Kinser hasn't been winning recently and usually finishes well down in the field. If he really is done, though, it will be tough to see him go. He and Sammy were among the original Outlaws — with Rick Ferkel, Scruffy Allan and Ronnie Shuman. They have some shoes in the series these days but the new guys are businessmen. Those early guys, they'd ride into town, skip slow laps, put the hammer down in the heats and feature and then make a get-a-way with all the money. And the King - well, he was the fastest and the bravest of them all.

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